Antarctica’s bare beauty overwhelms

It’s surprising how quickly your mind quiets after you arrive in Antarctica. The chilly winds… It’s surprising how quickly your mind quiets after you arrive in Antarctica. The chilly winds blow away recent memories, noises of the outside world and even the songs running through your head, leaving nothing to replace them.

Only after you leave it, though, does the continent begin to speak to you in haunting tones of loneliness, calling you to return like a lost companion.

When I first set foot in Antarctica, I suffered an overload. Years of anticipation and images of what the land would look like were fulfilled all at once. I tried taking pictures, but attempting to capture everything around me became a frantic chore. Taking notes also proved difficult; when looking over them later, I could barely read my hurried handwriting. The land, the sea and the life that surrounded me can only be recalled in feelings. Words seem barely sufficient.

The Hellenic Greeks theorized about a “great southern continent” 3,000 years ago, and it appeared on maps centuries before it was sighted. The continent has drawn adventurers, explorers and scientists, some of whom met death there.

When I was younger, I read everything I could find about Antarctica: articles in magazines, journals of famous explorers, even science fiction novels. Now, even though some of the great mysteries of Antarctica are common knowledge, the continent still draws my wonder.

Antarctica is a land of extremes: the lowest temperatures, the least moisture, the fastest winds. While humans must prepare to stay there for even a short time, a special kind of animal can live there year-round.

Cuverville Island is home to the largest community of Gentoo penguins, one of many species of the birds. Penguins are flightless, but they cruise through the water with all the ease of most other birds in the air.

As the austral summer drew to a close in February and March, the penguin chicks seemed fully grown, nearly the same size as their parents but still gray with down. On the banks of the island, young penguins would harass the older ones for food, tapping them with their beaks. The parents regurgitate some food for their children but would run away if they had already fed them. It’s time for the young ones to grow up and hunt for themselves.

The birds were curious, especially the chicks. As I sat on the beach, they waddled up to me, turning their heads to the side to get a better look and slowly stepping closer. If I sat still long enough, they would forget I was there, nearly stepping over me to get to the shore.

Amid the small icebergs floating around the island, Gentoo penguins would swim and jump in the sea, which they shared with a variety of whales. I was astonished to see a humpback whale slowly wake up just offshore. It exhaled a geyser of air and water into the sky and dove, sending its tail above water. The whale’s “footprint,” a patch of calm water where the tail submerged, floated along briefly before disappearing when it hit packed ice.

Farther south, along the mainland, another group of Gentoo penguins congregated at Neko Harbor, a small cove surrounded by slopes of glacial ice. As the temperature rose, the ice showed lines and cracks. Every few minutes, I could hear “Antarctic thunder” as a piece of glacier peeled off with a roar that echoed on the mountains and the ice, splashing into the sea and sending ripples across the entire bay.

A small, red hut sat near the shore. Like many shacks in Antarctica, it was built as an emergency refuge for adventurers. The shacks can also further a nation’s claim on the land. Although international law forbids any nation from claiming Antarctic lands until 2041, some countries include Antarctic territories on their maps and place structures on areas they claimed decades ago.

The wildlife paid no mind to political concerns. Seals would poke around the hut, looking for food. Penguins came ashore nearby and staggered up the rocks. Although they are graceful in the water, penguins’ small legs make land travel awkward. Their only recourse is “tobogganing,” sliding down slopes on their bellies.

In homage to the birds, I climbed to the top of one of the slopes surrounding the harbor and slid down the side. By the time I got to the bottom, I was nearly buried in snow. Penguins are much lighter than I am.

Nearby was Paradise Bay, named by 19th-century whalers for reasons that became obvious once I arrived there. Snow-covered mountains rose along every horizon, on the mainland and three islands. Whales slowly floated through the water as dark shapes, barely visible. The slopes gave the bay its own wind patterns and on calm days, the mountains seemed to suck up all sound, leaving nothing in its place.

Antarctica defied a traditional color wheel, creating magic contrasts out of the white of snow, the grays of rock, and the translucency of ice. A rare clear sky showed me a sunset of yellow and purple, reflected off the water and mountains. Light passing through icebergs turned them a dramatic light blue, which gathered in pockets like handfuls of jewels.

Like Atlantis and Shangri-La, Antarctica was once a legendary place. Long ago, maps had monsters encircling the end of the earth with warnings to sailors who might try to approach it. But this is one legend that came true, with beasts as wonderful as the ancients imagined and colors that even the greatest painters could not reproduce. Whether or not other legends will come true is still to be discovered.

And as Antarctica slowly disappeared behind me, I could already hear it calling back to me, a call that I still hear now.